#31

Rock-a-bye

After all that, I'm here. I walk over to the bunk bed next to my sleeping sibling's and set my bag down on top of it. Taking my coat off, I look over to the large, open doorway. I walk over to it, peering in to behold the least terrible thing I've seen yet today. A big, beautiful bathroom. Pure white tiles cover the floor and walls, and a large open shower area takes up half the room, with two bathroom stalls and two sinks occupying the other. This in itself makes up for the cold, grey dungeon part. Besides, I desperately need a shower to wash off the pasty mix of water and ash from my body. I kick my boots off and disappear into the shower half of the room, only to reappear a half hour later, clean and slightly less itchy from the fallout. I change back into some clean clothes, reattach my knife to my side, and slip my boots back on. I don't want to have to run and be unprepared.
Although warmer than outside, the shelter is very cold. Noticing Danielle curled in a ball with her thumb in her mouth, I pull the blanket off of her top bunk and drape it over her. I lie down in my own bed and pull the blanket up to my chin. The fluorescent light still shines down brightly, and would usually cause me to have a harder time going to sleep, but tonight I'm so exhausted I don't think it matters. Not to mention the childlike comfort I retain with them on.
After a moment of relaxation, my eyes close and I allow my thoughts to drift. My mother appears in my mind. Memories come flooding back to me, displaying a slideshow in my head of all the pain and suffering we went through. But oh, what I wouldn't give to go back to those days. To have her by my side, instead of in a casket, buried in the ground. What I wouldn't give to have my drug-addicted mother shouting profanities at me and hurling dishes at my head, instead of lying here in this strange bed, locked away in a concrete dungeon, one of the few survivors of a nuclear war. What I wouldn't give...